The Principles of Good Economic Management Can Be Expressed in Precisely Four Words: Low Taxes, Stable Money

Arthur Laffer went so far as to claim there are only four major reasons for a country to suffer major economic decline: monetary instability (probably devaluation), high or rising taxes, high or rising tariffs, and excessive regulation, particularly wage and price controls. Since tariffs are simply a form of taxation, the list reduces to only three. And since wage and price controls are usually imposed in reaction to the problems created by monetary instability or destructive tax policy, the list reduces further to two points—low taxes, stable money. The principles of good economic management can be expressed in those four words. If there is some sort of major economic difficulty or disaster in the world, it can usually be traced to some government whose taxes were not low enough (and probably rose sharply) or whose money was not stable enough (and whose value probably fell sharply).

--Nathan Lewis, Gold: The Once and Future Money (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2007), 139.